•
What is the best way to treat tuberculosis? • What is the quickest way to get to New York from
Los Angeles? • How high can a skyscraper be built? • What is the best way to obtain energy?

List
B

•
What is the best way to cope with feelings of anger? • Can love be sustained or is it destined to fade?
• How do we best find consolation in the face of
death? • How do we raise children to respect their parents?
• What would a meaningful work-life look like?

I am
sure you got it. List A comprises questions for which the answers change.

It is
easy to find the current answers to List A type questions. Study the latest
scientific data. Each year as we acquire more knowledge and achieve greater
technological prowess, those answers change.

In List
B, however, the answers never fundamentally change. Regardless of new
advances in science, technology, or medicine, the answers to those questions
remain the same.

These
kinds of questions gnaw away at people. Long ago, people turned to Scripture
for the answers. About the time of the Renaissance, secularism started
spreading its sordid stain and universities replaced the study of God’s
teachings with literature. People studied Seneca the Roman philosopher
partly to learn his views on anger management. They read Tolstoy’s
Anna Karenina or Flaubert’s Madame Bovary to gain
insight into the complex dynamics of marriage and studied Shakespeare’s
plays for understanding the entire range of human emotions.

As time
went on, we turned to science for the answers as if the human soul was
nothing more than $9.75 worth of common chemicals cunningly arranged into
millions of neurological wiring systems. Thus the pages of popular magazines
like Scientific American and Psychology Today offered
the 'latest ‘scientific information' on the role of intimacy in
marriage and how human interactions work. Of course it helps that a tolerant
readership overlooked the fact that one month’s advice frequently
contradicted that from another issue of the same magazine eighteen months
earlier.

Rather
than ignoring the Bible in a search for answers to List B, we might be
better off if, like many scientists of old, we turned to the Bible for
List A as well.

Yesterday
at lunch, historian David Barton of Wallbuilders
mentioned to me that famed oceanographer, Lieut. Matthew Fontaine Maury
(1806-1873) of the U.S. Navy, cited this verse as the impetus for his
brilliant discovery of ocean currents:

The
birds of the heaven
and the fish of the sea
all travel along the paths of the seas.
(Psalms 8:9)

Astronomer
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), a pioneer in understanding the laws of planetary
motion, credited his scientific research to a recognition that God made
an orderly world and our job was to discover the rules of that order.

Rather
than scoffing at Bible study while worshipping science, we should have
the humility to recognize that the Bible may have much to teach us. Needless
to say, especially when dealing with the very real List B questions which
have to do with successfully living our lives, we should admit that the
most modern developments have hardly produced spectacular success.

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So what
are we to do? The answer, to me, is clear, and I think you’ll agree
that there is really nothing to lose in giving my answer a fair try.

My answer
is that we must again turn back to the Bible for these answers. Just as
Psalms 8:9 did not reveal the specific currents of the North Atlantic,
but pointed Maury in the right direction, we do not find answers neatly
laid out. Yet the Bible, especially understood with the aid of ancient
Jewish wisdom, is utterly reliable as our compass. Try it with me for
2012. What is there to lose?

I am
very excited to announce the debut of the Ancient
Jewish Wisdom TV Show DVD. For over a year, my wife and I have had
tremendous fun appearing on the TCT network and we have picked four of
our favorite shows to share with you. You may even find some of the answers
to List B type questions while watching!

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, known world-wide
as America's Rabbi, is a noted rabbinic scholar, best-selling author and
host of the Rabbi Daniel Lapin Show on San Francisco’s KSFO. He
is one of America’s most eloquent speakers and his ability to extract
life principles from the Bible and transmit them in an entertaining manner
has brought countless numbers of Jews and Christians closer to their respective
faiths. In 2007 Newsweek magazine included him in its list of America’s
fifty most influential rabbis.